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A glossary attempt to harvest the summer school A vocabulary for grounding, rooting and standing

an essay by Zeynep Okyay
published in Decolonial Cultural Practices Towards Pluriversal Cultural Institutions and Policies
by Routledge London
Edited by Meike Lettau and Özlem Canyürek

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"Finally, Zeynep Okyay’s contribution “A glossary attempt to harvest the summer school: a vocabulary for grounding, rooting and standing” proposes a glossary as a method for unlearning Eurocentric knowledge, inspired by the documenta 15 glossary and lumbung practice. Her attempt to create a collective vocabulary, driven by the concept of nongkrong, aims to describe the processes involved in community-building within the summer school organized by Zeppelin University, using three sets of vocabulary: grounding, rooting and standing. Grounding focuses on team-building, drawing inspiration from Sekolah Temujalar (Temujalar School) established by the Gudskul collective for co-learning. Using this tacit knowledge as a foundation, the author explores group activities that formed the basis of the summer school, such as cooking and eating together, walking, dancing, singing and sharing sleeping spaces. Rooting, the second element of the vocabulary, involves exploring ideas around (in)justice, diversity, epistemic inequalities and care by looking at some of the works presented at documenta 15. Finally, the third vocabulary set, standing, centres on transforming these ideas cultivated during the grounding and rooting phases into statements that address colonialist, capitalist and patriarchal structures in art practices and institutions and encourage vulnerability for co-learning."

From documenta 15 to pluriversal horizons Rethinking cultural practices, institutions and policies by Özlem Canyürek and Meike Lettau




 

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